Ticket Scalpers Shadow Barclays Center Events

A thin, talkative man wearing a puffy blue winter jacket and black hoodie, who gives his name only as Lamar, is pacing outside the Barclays Center looking for a loner, someone who needs just a single ticket. He spots his man, a guy nervously milling around outside, hands in his pockets looking to make a deal, and makes his approach.

“Tickets?” he asks.

He tells the customer the seats he has available and, once the deal is struck, cash exchanges hands. It’s a scene played out in front of the rusty new arena nearly every night of the week.

The opening of the Barclays Center has been greeted with a mixed reaction. Some residents have bombarded local officials with quality-of-life complaints, ranging from noise and congested traffic, to instances of public urination. But most city officials see the arena as a jobs engine.

Mr. Markowitz most likely was not thinking about underground entrepreneurs like Lamar, 41, who is unemployed but has made a living scalping tickets for 20 years. Still, the Barclays Center’s commitment to at least 220 events this year has helped scalpers transform the concrete leading from Atlantic Terminal to the entrance of the arena into a lucrative ticket venue.

Following the Brooklyn Nets and Cleveland Cavaliers game on Nov. 13, Lamar unloaded his last ticket and headed across Flatbush Avenue to meet a buddy and fellow scalper, who said his name was Marley, at Machavelle Sports Bar and Lounge.

Marley, 38, lives in Harlem with his two sons and works as a part-time mechanic, as well as a plumber’s assistant. He started scalping at age 19 outside Madison Square Garden.

“My sons need sneakers,” he said, taking another sip from his glass of Hennessey. “You gotta get to work, you gotta pay rent, you gotta pay Con Ed — now my money has to go in so many different directions.”

Marley went back to college in 2010, but had to drop out because he couldn’t afford to pay the bills without a full-time job.

“I want my 18-year-old son to go to college, but he don’t want to go to college,” Marley said. “He wants to help out and get a job.”

After Hurricane Sandy damaged the subway system, Marley missed work for more than a week. Because events were either cancelled or postponed, he had no way of recouping the money he expected to earn by scalping.

“The extra money I made tonight will really help,” Marley said, pointing to the Nets and Cavaliers playing on a flat screen television behind the bar. “My block is still messed up — it looked like the end of the world.”

The profit margin for scalpers is slim, and every time they sell a ticket they risk arrest.

Officers from the 78th Precinct have arrested two scalpers since the arena opened on Sept. 28, according to police. The first arrest was made at a Jay-Z concert on Sept. 28 and the latest was outside of a Justin Bieber concert on Nov. 12, cops said. Marley said he thinks cops should concentrate on solving serious crimes.

“This is Brooklyn, people are murdered here all the time,” Marley said. “Scalping, come on man, we all got to get by … The cops are going to bust this up to set an example. I’ve been doing this for years, It’s gonna come — we’ll continue to play cat and mouse, it’s just part of the business.”

Despite the arrests made outside of the arena, there is no plan to regulate the booming online scalping trade on Web sites such as Craigslist, StubHub, Ticketmaster and TicketNetwork, police said. The sites use a loophole in New York State law, selling tickets out-of-state to skirt any chance of arrest.

“We can’t help naive people buying off of Craigslist looking for a deal, there’s nothing we can do to police that,” a community affairs officer at the 78th Precinct said.

Thanks to these online ticket vendors, Lamar said he has been lucky just to get face value for most tickets, unless it’s a major game against the Miami Heat or New York Knicks. However, Justin Bieber and Jay-Z concert tickets can sell for an additional 10 to 20 percent on top of the original ticket price, he said.

“Every scalper wants Bieber tickets, man,” said Lamar.

Under the brow of his New York Yankees baseball cap, Lamar’s eyes widened at the thought of being charged with scalping tickets, a Class E felony in New York. It’s an arrest that could result in a $5,000 fine and jail time, according to New York State statutory law.

I love the casual and yet hostile position you take to the “mixed reaction” of the “rusty” Arena.

There are plenty (if not a majority) of people in Brooklyn who love the new arena. In fact, since the introduction of the project almost 10 years ago, polls have consistently shown the Brooklyn public in favor of the plan.

Ticketmaster Sucks big time.. We all hate them but They are not gonna change unless we fight and burn them down.. join the movement with us against Ticketmaster and unethical practices like scalpinghttps://www.facebook.com/thefanarchist

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